


Whispers on the Wind

by PTlikesTea



Series: Breaking Down [22]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Crying, Gen, Gesture-speak, Rambling, Singing, SingingWhileCrying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-16 21:19:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5841349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PTlikesTea/pseuds/PTlikesTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pearl and the other pearls, light years away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whispers on the Wind

 

**Whispers on the Wind**

 

This is the companion piece to Echo. Short because I'm ill at the moment and I want to get at least one thing written today.

 

…..

 

 

“ _ **I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am full of tears and hunger and the fear of death, although I cannot weep, and I want nothing, and I cannot die. I am not like the others now, for no unicorn was ever born who could regret, but I do. I regret.”**_

 

_**The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle** _

 

 

It didn't happen often, just often enough to call attention to itself. Garnet had more or less shrugged her shoulders and accepted it as one of Pearl's quirks that she'd never understand. Amethyst had asked a few times, early on, and given up when she didn't get a straightforward answer. Even Rose, when she'd still been with them, had wondered what was causing it; it worried her.

 

Pearl could have explained, very easily, in gesture-speak. A dip of the hand to indicate the melody, a rounding gesture to show how it fell, a flicker of her fingers to say that it was only a snippet, a broken-off piece of what it had once been. By the time the fragments fell to her they were ancient, and it was hard to discern what they had been in full flow.

 

The first time she'd heard one, reached out and plucked it from the wind that had been flinging it around, and although it was nonsense syllables and a broken melody, she knew immediately it had come from another pearl. She had been inconsolable; it was before she'd gotten her words back, and it had greatly distressed Rose. She had tried to comfort her while she cried and rocked and tried to explain what was wrong in useless gesture-speak.

 

Over time, it became somewhat easier to bear. It was a comfort to know that pearls had found a way to communicate over distances; no-one could make sense of the fragments but another pearl. All of pearl culture, what little there was, was found wrapped up in those little snatches of song. Occasionally a stray memory would be hidden inside, a little flash of what she had left behind.

 

Sometimes the songs were sent out to her in particular. Scrambled and nonsensical as they were to the ears of anyone else who might have heard, if she closed her eyes she could have seen them writ in gesture and their meaning clear.

 

_Where are you now, sister?_

 

_When will we see you again?_

 

_We miss you..._

 

Knowing it worried her fellow Crystal Gems, she attempted to keep the effect it had on her to herself, but it was impossible. It stabbed at her as keenly as any weapon, and tears naturally followed in its wake. The best she could do was anticipate and hurry away to weep in private.

 

It occurred to her to try and sing back, to reach out to the others. But their art was lost to her, no amount of scanning the fragments would reveal how they had managed to spread their voices across the universe to reach her on Earth. Her own songs stayed rooted to the ground.

 

_Who wouldn't weep?_

 

The last little shred of her spike, rattling around in her gem like a particularly noxious weed, burned when she tried to reach out with her own songs. It seemed to know she was trying to do something forbidden. She often wondered how the others had managed to get around this with their own intact spikes.

 

But what use was wondering? Rose was gone, and after five thousand years Homeworld was finally taking notice of Earth again. Whatever else happened, she might someday get to speak with another pearl.

 

 

 


End file.
